Opinion

Saying that world’s injustices are a deity’s fault is not a valid argument

‘What God would allow this to happen’, we hear so many times when this world of ours coughs up evil, casting blame on the supernatural for man’s doing. The world is full of injustice, but saying it is a deity’s fault is not a valid argument. Man has lost the simple way and opts for complexity, difficulty, anxiety, stress and perfection, rather than simplicity. Our structured world is littered with conformist aspects which forces people to live in an artificial world which makes them miserable and contemptuous. They are distracted to the utmost and know little of themselves who are caught in a myriad of rat races. The capitalists and the right-wing will tell us the ‘end or ends justify the means’. What end or ends? When will all the injustice produced by man produce good and sustainable results? How many more centuries of wars, famines, governmental corruption, elitism, economic and political theories, will it take before people can be happy and not concerned or worried all the time? Our society is ridden with every kind of vice and hypocrisy imaginable. The drug industry is booming, both legal and illegal. The world of prostitution is growing and the diseases which go with it. Homelessness is more commonplace than ever before in addition to legions of unwanted children and indifferent parenting. The heralded internet has become a cesspit for paedophiles, predators, bullies, fraud and various forms of cyber crime, yet it is all God’s doing. Man has engineered his own hell-hole, set up a rotten and exclusionary class system and apologetic social protection system and divided people. Man has engineered and conjured up images of God and hell which may not be valid. The only ‘hell’ any one knows of is the rule of man. God is then blamed as a last resort when things go wrong, but one will find that man’s greed and convenience is behind many, if not all, the evils in the world. God and the forces of nature which are relative to supernatural forces or natural forces, engineered the world as we know it. Man is trying to re-engineer it but failing to see the big picture. Populations are rising not falling and all the pollution which goes with big masses of people, so the capitalists can give them big mortgages for shoe-box, slap-up duplexes. It is no wonder people are struggling to stay healthy in a society where man is living and destroying his environment and making token gestures to cut back on a society built on insatiable greed, not need. It is arguably the case that the world would be a better place if people did not get out of bed in the morning to work. The more people that do, the more complex and expensive it gets and to what end – a life of misery? But there is always the old reliable standby – ‘it is God’s fault’. God should never be blamed in lieu for man’s own engineering hands in organising a world and crippling it at the same time. 

MAURICE FITZGERALD


Shanbally, Co  Cork

‘Battle with capital’, as in France, lies in renewing Republic

The ‘Gilets Jaunes’ protests in Paris are symptomatic of working-class discontent – not only in France and with the Élysée Palace but with governments and states across the west.

But for the emerging movement in France to succeed it must establish a political direction. The manifesto commitment of Jen-Luc Melenchon – to mount a constituent assembly upon a ‘Fifth French Republic’ – is the direction it hopefully travels.

This, too, is where we should aim towards in Ireland.

The core objective for a movement as this, here, must be to restore the sovereignty and unity of the Irish Republic. For ourselves, the battle with capitalism unfolding on the Champs Élysées lies there – in establishing anew that Republic.

The French, too, should do likewise, by bringing forward the assembly proposed by Melenchon at the last election – giving, thus, power to the people to determine their affairs and their destiny.

We are dealing, in the now, with a rigged system – one designed by the already powerful to preserve their position over that of working people. We need, then, to design a new system and that is what a constituent assembly can give onto.

In the times of flux before us, born of Brexit and new demographic realities, we must ensure that when we arrive at a nationalist majority – triggering thus political change – that we move not to a revision of the standing order but instead to a new beginning.

Asserting Irish sovereignty and independence will be key in that event; building a movement capable of doing so the necessary precursor and the task now to hand – a popular extra-constitutional movement that upholds the republican object.

People in France, likewise, must have a clear idea as to what and where they intend, if their discontent is not to be hijacked in the event it succeeds toward change.

Through such endeavour, we can arrive together at our shared objective – the free association of free nations envisaged by the great James Connolly. Whether in France or in Ireland, his timeless vision is now where our efforts must set toward.

SEAN BRESNAHAN


Thomas Ashe Society,


Omagh, Co Tyrone

May’s offering must be rejected

Britain to day has become stranger than fiction. A democratic referendum was held for the people to decide whether Britain should remain or leave the EU. The British people voted to leave.

When one leaves any organisation or employer  there are no deals, restrictions or penalties imposed for leaving.

It was therefore the duty and responsibility, I may add, of our British prime minister to take Britain out of the EU. 

Theresa May has from the very beginning conducted a course of deception on the British people, eg Brexit means Brexit. Yes, her idea of Brexit, not the Brexit 17-plus million people voted for. 

Theresa May has got this country in abject turmoil, chaos abounds at every facet of our society.

Our prime minister has created a political impasse where she does not appear to understand the significance of the perilous situation Britain is now in.

This bill Theresa May is offering to parliament must never be given authorisation.

HARRY STEPHENSON


Kircubbin, Co Down

Brexit garrulity

As Attorney General Cox enters the Brexit fray to tell us that the UK would have no ‘unilateral right’ to quit the controversial Irish backstop, I am reminded of the account Irish poet James Stephens gave of his meeting with Joyce in Dublin: ‘I looked at him without a word in my mouth except vocabulary.’

Will someone not chart the interminable sea of Brexit garrulity for us, point out the shallows and depths, tell us where the words are vocabulary only and where they are propitiatory, where is language used for languages sake and where is it used as a gabble-gabble ritual to make tolerable the meaningless of Brexit backstops? It would be of practical help to know if politicians like Theresa May and Arlene Foster are drowning within their own depth of vocabulary or out of it and when would it be decent for us to leave them to it. Meantime, it is all significance and no content.

WILSON BURGESS


Derry City